In promoting her new movie, Selma, Oprah Winfrey has attempted to look at the parallel between the civil rights struggle of the 1960s compared to the struggle going on today, specifically around Ferguson. Unfortunately, she seems way out of touch:
What I’m looking for, is some kind of leadership to come out of this to say, ‘This is what we want. This is what we want. This is what has to change, and these are the steps that we need to take to make these changes, and this is what we’re willing to do to get it.’ ” Protest organizers and sympathizers swiftly slammed her comments, calling her condescending, ill informed, and dismissive of youth-led organizing in a way that widens the generational civil rights divide.
To see how just how wrong Oprah is, look at St. Louis native Ashley Yates, better known as @brownblaze, who has been in Ferguson from the beginning. Team Blackness sat down with Ashley to discuss the beginning of this new movement, what activists have learned since August, and why self-care is so important for the overall movement.
Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS
MomSense
I can’t wait to listen to the interview with Ashley.
Villago Delenda Est
John Cole, could you and Mistermix and your web page designer get with Elon and find a way to prevent the doubleposts? I’m fairly certain that Elon is doing exactly what he was told to do in posting, but the problem persists, and there’s something flawed in the process.
I now return you to discussion of this topic…which I find fascinating.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Oprah’s a multi-billionaire. She knows nothing about nothing and she’s got no reason to change that.
Couldn't Stand the Weather
I am not as upset with Oprah. I can see why others are, however.
If not for this blog and several other progressive sites, Amy Goodman and certain shows on MSNBC, I wouldn’t know about many subjects like Ferguson. I’d just know what the MSM cranks out, which is worse than useless.
A person with her connections and resources can (hopefully) be brought further in to this discussion, with the young people on the ground. Not just ridiculed for being out of touch. Oprah might end up hosting a show, or roundtable with Elon Ashley Yates and other activists.
We can save our collective scorn for the Herman Cains, Clarence Thomases, Don Lemons and Allen Wests (not to mention the black Fox News presenters; as a black man, I cannot see how they can cash those checks without signing Iscariot rather than their names).
End semi-rant.
Tree With Water
I’m an old white guy, but even I know better because I’ve read T. Coates. He recently addressed the yearning for the emergence of a MLK type figure as being wishfully unrealistic, indeed impossible, if only because times have changed. Oprah should look him up.
mellowjohn
billionaire oprah “out-of-touch?” who woulda guessed?
did you contact her at whichever of her many mansions she’s occupying to day for a comment?
greennotGreen
Disclaimer: I am a white boomer.
It has been my experience that many African Americans of the MLK generation almost deify him. My belief is that King was a wonderful spokesman for a movement that could be delayed, but not stopped. All his inspiring rhetoric would have gone for naught if there hadn’t been many, many people who were willing to risk, often, their very lives to march or sit at a lunch counter or just show up.
So, I’m not surprised that Oprah would think today’s justice movement needs a Martin. I have more faith that the widespread “leadership” of the current movement can make progress, just as I give more credit to the average civil rights protester in the 60s for the eventual success (to the degree that it was successful) at that time than I do for MLK alone.
Another Holocene Human
@Couldn’t Stand the Weather: I agree. Oprah is plugged into the MSM, she is a creature of it, and the revolution just was not televised by the MSM. It was on twitter and other social media. Vine. Facebook events. SMSing informal networks.
There is a ton of organizing going on but just like the last time the media isn’t interested until it erupts from below the surface.
Oprah wants leaders? There are a lot of eloquent voices out there. Bit of an authoritarian obsession, eh? Why not interview Michelle Alexander, or Antonio French, or Eric Garner’s family? There are plenty of organized anti-SYG youth groups who would love to get a chance to talk to big media to spread their message, such as Dream Defenders in Florida.
It’s funny, media always loves the easy button. That’s why crazy Donohue of the Catholic League is on speed dial with his little mailing list, his fax machine, his kids (uncompensated), and his mostly silent partner of angry old men shouting at clouds He-Man Woman-Hater KoC club members egging him on. An amorphous, semi-autonomous, national group of locally organized groups, vaguely descended from Occupy (but not directly affiliated), led by youth, spilling onto the MSM from the murky world of twitter and tumblr hashtag activism, proclaiming no leaders, only a cause? PITA, plus the local spokes-activists are often kind of shitty at media because they haven’t done it before. But even so, it’s a local news at 7 kind of thing.
For the media it’s about easy but for some media figures it’s probably also confusion. They deal with the upper echelons of hierarchy all the time and get confused by seeming anarchy and disorganization. And, hey, it’s true–while there is self-policing going on these movements are vulnerable to crazies, provocateurs, entrapment, and opportunists.
Botsplainer
My query is simple – who was actually effective at reaching a satisfactory conclusion? MLK, or disparate groups of yelling and potentially competing activists of Occupy-type ilk?
Have multipolar left protest movements that haven’t crystallized around strong leaders ever been successful? Is the notion of decentralized protest really useless hype?
Would the Russian Revolution have been successful without Lenin? The French Revolution without Robespierre? Haitian liberation without L’Ouverture? The peaceful and orderly end to apartheid without Mandela?
Don’t multipolar leftist movements always turn into giant orgies of violence and corruption?
Starfish
@Botsplainer: Though there was a very multi-polar leftism when the Iraq War protests started, Occupy was more organized and focused than those protests.
I think that Millenials having been the victims of helicopter parenting that put them in team sports from a young age are better at working together than people a generation or two above them so they may be able to organize and have movements without having figureheads.
The lack of figureheads will make the mainstream media sad, but it will prevent establishment groups from co-opting a movement like the Republicans did to the libertarian movement.
Marc
@Another Holocene Human:
Which might suggest the value of having a few liberal and progressive voices who could also sit on that speed dial and get their voices out there.
Nah, that’s too centralized and hierarchical. Let’s cook up a few more hashtags and #disruptsomemorebrunches!
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human:
They are the laziest of lazy-ass motherfuckers who do not want to do the necessary work to get the real story, for two reasons:
1. They’re lazy-ass motherfuckers.
2. Their paymasters actively discourage doing the necessary work.
Another Holocene Human
@Marc: I dunno why disrupting brunch attracts so much ire. Of course it’s silly, of course it’s the totally self-satisfied bubble-living kind of NYC too-cuteness that all of us outside the NY media bubble love to hate, hipster activism, much like Code Pink going off about Chelsea Manning at an Obama fundraiser. You could suffocate from the utter smugness in the air. But so what, the only reason you heard about it was because NYC media animals are more equal than other media animals. Just because you wouldn’t do it in your town doesn’t mean you’re qualified to assess how effective the tactic was locally. Maybe the organizers are doing their own assessment right now. Maybe the fact that a national audience is fuming about it a week later just vindicates the ones who pushed for it. You’re empowering them.
Personally, I like the gumption of the white activists who stormed the PD HQ in STL.
Every time stuff like this happens, there are bystanders who learn something. I can still remember the first time I saw a protest sign that said “Amerikkka”. It made me wonder what I wasn’t being told by my parents, the schools, and the nightly news. Now I’m one of those protesters.
Protest is like a muscle that has atrophied from disuse. I got my start protesting the Iraq war. Got all of my younger siblings out there, pissed my mother right off. She lost some control over us that day.
Keep flexing that muscle. Little by little, it gets stronger.
Marc
@Another Holocene Human:
I think you just answered your own question.
If you have to defend a protest by claiming that some hypothetical bystander might have learned some ill-defined “something,” that’s a sign that it failed rhetorically as well as tactically.
J R in WV
I don’t know if Elon reads the comments on his posts at all… I find them fascinating, but – I don’t ever get the details, as I don’t prefer to absorb information by listening to audio.
I read and write, with a keyboard. I don’t really hear all that well over-all, after years of working with loud tools, like tractors, excavators, chainsaws, table-saws, sanders, and listening to loud music. You don’t know about loud music until you have performed with a hundred other people – I was a tuba player for years.
Anyway, Elon, if you continue with posting these interesting episodes, I wish you would consider some way to generate a transcript of the interesting thoughts and facts you include in every episode. Something written, like a blog, only connected to your interviews and stuff! That deafer sorts of people can read…
K,Thanks,Bai
Harold Samson
@J R in WV:
Every time I see an interesting looking post or article online only to find out it’s a video or audio track, I’m disappointed.
Audio-Visual media is demanding of your time and attention. For known entertainment value I’m prepared to invest that, but for ideas and perspectives, especially from a variable or unknown source, it’s too much to ask. I won’t bother, because 99% of the time there’s not enough there to warrant the investment.
Would like to know Elon’s opinion about things, but not going to invest an hour of ear time to get a handful of points that I could read in two minutes.
From the # of comments on his posts, I would guess I’m not the only one.